Meanwhile, Sarah Mulholland reports that with investors looking for higher yield than traditional commercial mortgages now offer, property-backed CDOs — pools of sliced and diced mortgage bonds — are suddenly back. Sales of property-backed CDOs should be up to $10 billion in 2013, nothing like past peaks but ten times this year’s level.

In other words, just as mortgage bonds themselves start to slip, complex investments built from such bonds return. The Market Now will skip further comment here. When fish are packed this tight in a barrel, shooting them is a waste of bullets.